Ever since landing in Berlin’s electronic scene in 2005, Gelbart has become one of the city’s best-kept secrets. Gelbart’s concerts are a one-man tour de force—a DIY extravaganza that blends bizarre electropop with surreal visuals, seamlessly synchronized to create an immersive, multidimensional experience.
Gelbart is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist, composer, filmmaker, and author. His lifelong devotion to innovation has so far resulted in more than 20 LPs and EPs (on Joyful Noise, Gagarin Records, and Lo Recordings among others), compositions for live ensembles, numerous award-winning works of vegetable and/or bunny animation, and a sci-fi novel.
A dive into Gelbart’s body of work uncovers a bizarre yet wholly consistent world—an absurdist mirror-universe of sound and imagery that fuses the high-brow with the low, and the accessible with the complex. To sidestep the clichéd knob-tweaking of electronica and infuse his shows with band-like energy, Gelbart has developed a signature performance method. He combines synthesizers with guitar, bass clarinet, vocoder, and a self-built blipping machine—often juggling them all at once.
Gelbart’s music has been a fixture on WFMU, while his animations graced festivals from London to Japan, and his sci-fi film Vermin was screened at the US Library of Congress. In recent years, Gelbart composed a large-scale, 70-minute work commissioned for a live ensemble at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (set for release as a double LP in late 2025), as well as a long-form piece for string quartet and electronic voice, performed in both Casa del Lago, Mexico and Berghain. Gelbart’s upcoming solo LP, Liquids and Flesh, will be released on Egglike Records in April 2025.
